Co-production and the Use of Constituency Development Funds (CDFs) in Poverty Alleviation: A Case of Selected Constituencies in Zambia

Constituency Development Fund (CDF) is the generic name for a policy tool that dedicates public money to benefit specific political subdivisions through allocations and/or spending decisions influenced by their representatives in the national parliament (Centre for International Development 2009: 8-9). Dissimilar to large national development projects, CDF-financed projects are essentially community based and driven with the major aim of bringing facilities and services closer to people for purposes of improving their social economic living conditions, especially reducing poverty. In the 2022 Zambia National Budget, CDF saw an unprecedented increase in the size of funding and scope of its mandate. For the year 2023, CDF was increased from K25.7 million (USD 1,070,833) to K28.3 million (USD 1,179,167) per constituency while being expanded to include additional components such as youth, disabled and women empowerment programs as well as secondary school bursaries that will now be locally administered. It is in this regard that the authors undertook a study to assess the impact of CDFs on poverty alleviation in 12 constituencies selected namely, Kankoyo, Moomba, Bweengwa, Mpika, Rufunsa, Monze, Chawama, Mufulira, Kaoma, Kantanshi, Mbala and Solwezi. Data was collected from men, youth and the disabled from the said constituencies. Due to the nature of data collected, mixed methodology research was used. Qualitative data was analysed with the aid of ATLAS.ti while quantitative data was analysed using SPSS Version 30. Key findings are that the general public is aware of the existence of the CDFs and that it is a government empowerment programme especially for funding education and skills acquisition through school bursaries and skills development components, community projects and empowerment loans. However, empirical evidence on the ground point to challenges of the CDFs through political patronage, nepotism, the abdication of key decision making to the politician (Member of parliament) who has massive influence as he/she has power to arbitrary hand-pick 6 members out of 12 to the main CDF committee responsible for administration of CDF funds.